_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 13, 1845.]
Now, dearest, I will try and write the little I shall be able, in
reply to your letter of last week--and first of all I have to entreat
you, now more than ever, to help me and understand from the few words
the feelings behind them--(should _speak_ rather more easily, I
think--but I dare not run the risk: and I know, after all, you will be
just and kind where you can.) I have read your letter again and
again. I will tell you--no, not _you_, but any imaginary other person,
who should hear what I am going to avow; I would tell that person most
sincerely there is not a particle of fatuity, shall I call it, in that
avowal; cannot be, seeing that from the beginning and at this moment I
never dreamed of winning your _love_. I can hardly write this word, so
incongruous and impossible does it seem; such a change of our places
does it imply--nor, next to that, though long after, _would_ I, if I
_could_, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have
taken root in you--_that_ great and solemn one, for instance. I feel
that if I could get myself _remade_, as if turned to gold, I WOULD not
even then desire to become more than the mere setting to _that_
diamond you must always wear. The regard and esteem you now give me,
in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon, is
all I can take and all too embarrassing, using _all_ my gratitude. And
yet, with that contented pride in being infinitely your debtor as it
is, bound to you for ever as it is; when I read your letter with all
the determination to be just to us both; I dare not so far withstand
the light I am master of, as to refuse seeing that whatever is
recorded as an objection to your disposing of that life of mine I
would give you, has reference to some supposed good in that life which
your accepting it would destroy (of which fancy I shall speak
presently)--I say, wonder as I may at this, I cannot but find it
there, surely there. I could no more 'bind _you_ by words,' than you
have bound me, as you say--but if I misunderstand you, one assurance
to that effect will be but too intelligible to me--but, as it _is_, I
have difficulty in imagining that while one of so many reasons, which
I am not obliged to repeat to myself, but which any one easily
conceives; while _any one_ of those reasons would impose silence on me
_for ever_ (for, as I observed, I love you as you now are, and _would_
not remove one affection that is already part of you,)--_would_ you,
being able to speak _so_, only say _that you_ desire not to put 'more
sadness than I was born to,' into my life?--that you 'could give me
only what it were ungenerous to give'?
Have I your meaning here? In so many words, is it on my account that
you bid me 'leave this subject'? I think if it were so, I would for
once call my advantages round me. I am not what your generous
self-forgetting appreciation would sometimes make me out--but it is
not since yesterday, nor ten nor twenty years before, that I began to
look into my own life, and study its end, and requirements, what would
turn to its good or its loss--and I _know_, if one may know anything,
that to make that life yours and increase it by union with yours,
would render me _supremely happy_, as I said, and say, and feel. My
whole suit to you is, in that sense, _selfish_--not that I am ignorant
that _your_ nature would most surely attain happiness in being
conscious that it made another happy--but _that best, best end of
all_, would, like the rest, come from yourself, be a reflection of
your own gift.
Dearest, I will end here--words, persuasion, arguments, if they were
at my service I would not use them--I believe in you, altogether have
faith in you--in you. I will not think of insulting by trying to
reassure you on one point which certain phrases in your letter might
at first glance seem to imply--you do not understand me to be living
and labouring and writing (and _not_ writing) in order to be
successful in the world's sense? I even convinced the people _here_
what was my true 'honourable position in society,' &c. &c. therefore I
shall not have to inform _you_ that I desire to be very rich, very
great; but not in reading Law gratis with dear foolish old Basil
Montagu, as he ever and anon bothers me to do;--much less--enough of
this nonsense.
'Tell me what I have a claim to hear': I can hear it, and be as
grateful as I was before and am now--your friendship is my pride and
happiness. If you told me your love was bestowed elsewhere, and that
it was in my power to serve you _there_, to serve you there would
still be my pride and happiness. I look on and on over the prospect of
my love, it is all _on_wards--and all possible forms of unkindness ...
I quite laugh to think how they are _behind_ ... cannot be encountered
in the route we are travelling! I submit to you and will obey you
implicitly--obey what I am able to conceive of your least desire, much
more of your expressed wish. But it was necessary to make this avowal,
among other reasons, for one which the world would recognize too. My
whole scheme of life (with its wants, material wants at least, closely
cut down) was long ago calculated--and it supposed _you_, the finding
such an one as you, utterly impossible--because in calculating one
goes upon _chances_, not on providence--how could I expect you? So for
my own future way in the world I have always refused to care--any one
who can live a couple of years and more on bread and potatoes as I did
once on a time, and who prefers a blouse and a blue shirt (such as I
now write in) to all manner of dress and gentlemanly appointment, and
who can, if necessary, groom a horse not so badly, or at all events
would rather do it all day long than succeed Mr. Fitzroy Kelly in the
Solicitor-Generalship,--such an one need not very much concern himself
beyond considering the lilies how they grow. But now I see you near
this life, all changes--and at a word, I will do all that ought to be
done, that every one used to say could be done, and let 'all my powers
find sweet employ' as Dr. Watts sings, in getting whatever is to be
got--not very much, surely. I would print these things, get them away,
and do this now, and go to you at Pisa with the news--at Pisa where
one may live for some £100 a year--while, lo, I seem to remember, I
_do_ remember, that Charles Kean offered to give me 500 of those
pounds for any play that might suit him--to say nothing of Mr. Colburn
saying confidentially that he wanted more than his dinner 'a novel on
the subject of _Napoleon_'! So may one make money, if one does not
live in a house in a row, and feel impelled to take the Princess's
Theatre for a laudable development and exhibition of one's faculty.
Take the sense of all this, I beseech you, dearest--all you shall say
will be best--I am yours--
Yes, Yours ever. God bless you for all you have been, and are, and
will certainly be to me, come what He shall please!